The Bottom Shelf 3

By Simone Sekers

It was a wet Friday morning in Devizes. We admired the architecture from beneath dripping umbrellas - even in the rain it is a lovely town. What makes it perfect is the existence of d'Arcy Books, that rare combination of a perfectly ordered bookshop that nevertheless gives you the feeling that here you will find treasures. For the first time I found a whole collection of novels by Eleanor Dark, the Australian writer, only one of which has been selected by Virago ('The Little Company', and with one of their very best covers) - I chose 'Storm of Time', published first in 1948 and the second part of a trilogy. I couldn't resist another copy of Katherine Mansfield's short story collections - 'Bliss' - this time in one of the little Tauchnitz paperbacks, 1930, battered (had it kept someone company through the war?) but complete. Then an elegant copy of 'A Shepherd's Life' by W H Hudson, in a Compton Press edition, designed by Humphrey Stone and illustrated with wood engravings by his father, Reynolds. The flyleaf has an inscription, 'To Beryl, Christmas 1984, Love David' . Who were Beryl and David? Are they still? They seemed to have enjoyed the book; it is what book dealers called 'a shaken copy' and it carries a faint whiff of cigarette smoke. I can imagine Beryl sitting by the fire on Boxing Day, with a piece of Christmas cake and a cup of tea - or perhaps a glass of whisky - losing herself in Hudson's stories of the countrymen who peopled Cranbourne Chase and the Wylye Valley at the beginning of the last century.

As a passionate admirer of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey novels, I was delighted to find 'Lord Anson's Voyage Round the World 1740-1744', written by his chaplain Richard Walter, who has a coolly nonchalant style which deals with storms, piracy, scurvy and all the other dangers of long sea-voyages in such a way as to make you feel equally bold and devil-may-care, but thankful you won't have to be. This is one of the 'Travel & Adventure' Penguin series, published in 1947; the list also includes 'With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet', by Alexandra David-Neil, and 'The Worst Journey in the World', Apsley Cherry-Garrard, among the very best of nail-biting armchair travel. Then, just as we felt it might be time for a half of Wadworth's and a pork pie, I found the Readers Union edition of Mrs Robert Henrey's 'The Little Madeleine' - the autobiographical account of her childhood in Paris and London at the about the same time as Hudson was writing 'A Shepherd's Life'; no two books could be more different. The descriptions of life in Montmartre, as a child of an ex-miner from the Midi turned card-player and professional drinker, and of a seamstress forced to marry too young, is fascinating if muddling. Time and time again I have had to turn back to find out which of the aunts married well and which had an illegitimate daughter named after the heroine of a paperback romance; whose husband was an avaricious hunchback and whose was a handsome hairdresser. It doesn't matter. Mrs Henrey wrote in heavily accented English, which makes for a truly French experience. Think of Jean de Florette combined with Colette and seasoned with a pinch of salt. A must-read.